Friday, June 25, 2010

As delinquent as I've been about posting lately, I bet ya'll thought I'd already been away on vaca.

Nope.

Just been too busy to blog. This past week has had me running here and there . . . working . . . baseball practice . . . getting the house ready for us to be away . . .

I know many of you can relate!

Come Sunday, me and Hubby and Son No. 3 will be flying off to the Sunshine State.

Florida.

YAY!!!

It's just going to be the three of us. Sons 1 and 2 have work and school and girlfriends and all that other older kid stuff. Besides, it had dawned on us that Son No. 3 had not had the Orlando experience since he was four.

A month or so ago, Hubby booked a wonderful, quick get-away for us.

I'll tell you, that man missed his calling. If he hadn't decided to go into law enforcement, I'm sure he could have had a fabulous career as a travel agent/adviser. LOL!!! He finds the best deals on trips/vacations. Every vacation we've ever taken, he has done all the research, booking, etc.

All I need to do is know when to pack my suitcase!

We'll be staying at what looks like a gorgeous resort,

The Villas Of Grand Cypress

in Orlando

It's a golf resort, so we're hoping just maybe we can get in a teeny bit of golf.

We won't be doing Disney while in Florida. Honestly, we've never really been "Disney People", or more specifically The Magic Kingdom. We did take the boys a couple years in a row about nine or so years ago, and they really weren't into The Magic Kingdom. Maybe if they were girls??? We all found that we just LOVED Universal Studios.

And that's where we'll be headed . . .

Universal Studios and Universal's Islands of Adventure.

I'm super-excited about the new Harry Potter Park (I just love the Harry Potter Series!) that's just opened at Universal - June 16th to be exact. I heard there's been an 8 hour wait for the rides.

Uhhhh . . . don't think sooo . . .

But it will be totally cool to walk around and see how they transformed scenes from the movies into real life.

We're also planning to hit one of Disney's two water parks - Blizzard Beach.

It's a water park designed like a ski resort. Clever and cute, huh?

Another exciting excursion we have planned is going to see the Cirque de Soleil show

La Nouba

at Downtown Disney.

"La Nouba is a mesmerizing and extraordinary avant-garde circus spectacle."

Finally, we're planning on taking the short drive from Orlando to Cocoa Beach for part of one day.

If we plan to hit the beach on the last full day, it could possibly be an opportunity for us to relax!

You know how sometimes vacations aren't all too relaxing because you're going and going and going? I'm sure this trip will keep us busy mostly every waking minute.

I have a busy couple days coming up . . . grad party . . . all-star baseball game . . . packing for trip . . . cooking some meals for the big boys for while we're away . . .

Monday, June 21, 2010

I found these cute little chipboard "bitty boxes" in star shapes at a local craft store. Thought they'd be perfect for creating some quick patriotic napkin rings.

I used just the tops, and as you see, I slapped on a quick coat of blue craft paint. But the color was bit too bright. So, I used my distressing ink to tone down the brightness a little.

Poking holes in the center of each of the stars,

I threaded buttons with sections of covered elastic.

Then I simply pulled them through the holes and tied off the elastic on the back.

I had to experiment a little with the length of the elastic, and found that about 7 inches worked well.

The wood tray that's the anchor of my patriotic centerpiece has been almost every color under the sun!

A tomato sauce can gets a second life as a votive holder

after being painted and dressed up with a sleeve of patriotic scrapbook paper.

Sauce cans are especially nice for recycling into candle holders because the inside of the can is white!

Try painting them - or not - fill the cans with water and freeze. Once the the water freezes solid, start piercing the the can with an awe or ice pick to create a random design or a design you drew on the can prior to freezing. After you're done poking, and the ice melts, pop in a votive and you'll have just the cutest little candle holder. Make up a bunch and hang them from a tree in your yard to enjoy in the evenings!

Drug store flags that were tea-dyed are placed in a vintage cream bottle from the Hagerstown (Maryland) Dairy.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

You see, this time of year my mind is almost totally in garden mode. Cause, I'll tell ya, come the middle of July and August when the real heat and humidity roll in, I'm pretty much in the A.C. neglecting my gardens. So I really like to enjoy them as much as possible before the oppressive heat kicks in!

feature, (found Ms. Jean through my bloggy friend Darlene!)so I thought I'd go through my past posts and create a montage of all my best garden pics. I've really put a lot of hard work into the gardens so far this season, and I'm thrilled to share them with you. I'm also excited to be able to use Jean's link party to check out some other blogger's great gardens.